This battle occurred during our latest adventure in my friend's realm using Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Second Edition rules. The party consisted of my enchantress, Maya, a druid of an arctic race created by my friend, a Firbolg warrior, and a NPC dwarven fighter. We were out searching for a high anvil, a lost artifact. My character, using clairvoyance, had scouted the canyon it was rumored to be lost in and had found a broken crane from an earlier attempt to recover this artifact.

It was my idea to search for the anvil, and as part of the plan, I bought materials to repair the crane, planning to use it to descend to the bottom of the canyon. I already had a ring which would allow me to make the anvil levitate, so transporting the anvil wasn't going to be a significant problem. Naturally, since we were going after an artifact, we were expecting trouble, and it would indeed find us. Unfortunately, it would find us as we were lowering our Firbolg friend to the bottom of the canyon.

The first wave of attackers would be three arctic wolves. A cold breath attack from them did a fair amount of damage, especially to my soft enchantress, but with a potion of animal control, I managed to gain control of all three of them, so they soon ceased to be a problem. We would soon find out that the wolves were sent by three ogres to kill us, and the ogres were coming to join the battle. The ogres soon found themselves being attacked by their own pets as well as an angry dwarven fighter. The druid and I stayed back, casting spells. I cast Scare, making them tremble in fear and rendered them unable to attack, while the druid cast Heat Metal on their armor. We then relaxed as the dwarf, the wolves, and the effects of our spells slowly killed the ogres. At this point, I was expecting it to be over; this trouble was less than I was expecting and turned out to be easy to handle. Naturally, things would get much, much worse.

Which ending is the real one?

A.

My enchantress had earlier discovered that in a secret room in her mentor's tower, there was a eye of a white dragon hidden away. Her mentor had told her that the dragon was still alive as he and his friends had failed to kill it before. That said, this dragon was the last thing she was expecting to find once the party had finally been able to get to the bottom of the canyon, but a one-eyed white dragon was exactly what burst from the snow nearby. Our DM had us perform an Alertness test, which most of us passed, and so we noticed a nearby cave. Going for the cave was the only real choice as our party wasn't nearly strong enough to take on a white dragon. We managed to get in the cave and get out of the way as the white dragon inadverently sealed the entrance with his icy breath weapon. Unfortunately, this cave led into the underdark, and we now had no choice to explore it to look for a way out.

B.

During the battle, a snowstorm had arrived, greatly reducing visibility. Our first hint of our next attacker came when the crane itself was attacked. We then discovered that our next foe was a frost giant, and we wouldn't fare quite so well against him. The druid cast a spell that allowed her to use some of the wood from the now broken crane to trip the frost giant, hoping that our foe would fall into the canyon. He didn't, but our dwarven friend was knocked into the canyon by the falling giant. We looked over the side, expecting to see him falling to his death, but once he fell about halfway, he suddenly began to fall very slowly. I cast Detect Magic, and learning that there was indeed a spell of the alteration school in effect, I jumped into the canyon as well followed by the druid. We also found that our rate of descent slowed dramatically halfway down. That's also when we could see the sigil in the canyon wall creating the feather fall effect that had saved us from our choice of death by sudden impact or by angry frost giant. This spell had also saved the Firbolg, so we were all reunited at the bottom of the canyon, though now getting back up was going to be a problem. That's a story for another time, though.